Meeps, you've also got to remember that this is a story - not real life. I think the way it turns out is more satisfying to the reader that if there had been a fair trial.

But if you want to talk about real life - if Gaddafi had been captured and given a trial, it would have dragged the whole thing on and on and the rebuilding of the country couldn't really take place until he'd been executed. The outcome would have been the same - he'd have been dead. The way it happened meant there was no fuss, no bother and no expense.

There are countless stories where the bad guy gets killed by the good guy. I almost cheered when it happened in Snuff and I loved the scene of the bully being brought right down and terrified by Pepe in UA. It speaks to everyone who has ever felt powerless to a bully seeing the tables being turned so effectively.

That scene was pointless. Maybe if we would have SEEN andy living up to the reputation the story tries to hammer into us, (Sorry, but the book breaks even with the basic rule of -show don't tell- and not only in Andy's case.) then, okay.
The similar scene in Nightwatch was excellent, especially since we got a feeling for Carcer being a serious threat.

Do you know the rule of 'show don't tell'?
The book constantly TELLS us how evil and rotten Andy is at everything he does.
But when we actually SEE him do something...

EDIT: There is a big difference between what you mean and what is happening in the story.

If, for example, we would have seen Andy washing blood off his hands and commenting that he'd been bored, we wouldn't have seen him do anything, but we would know that he did something likely gruesome.

What we got in the Text instead is the text passively telling us that he's evil, and characters saying that he's vicious, but all we SEE him do is trying to injure someone's hands by pressing it to hard, trying to kick someone in the family jewels and...well, that's it, everything else we only hear from other characters.
Even the bit with Carter falls flat as that scene is, plotvise, completely use- and pointless.

DJ, I have to say here, go and read 'How not to write a novel' even if that book is to be taken with a grain of salt, it still lists many things one should avoid when writing.

And trying to tell the reader what someone/something is like, aka having the characters in the book make up an opinion for the reader is one of these mistakes.

In short: UA is packed (!) with mistakes that should not be there. Especially NOT since it is a Discworld novel.
I said it before but this circumstance is the reason I despise UA that much.
Because it makes me sad with its Un-Discworldness (to call it that in this case)

Doughnut Jimmy wrote:LilMabe regardless of what another book says if something works and readers like it it isn't a flaw. Books don't have to be great stylistically to be enjoyable and valued.

While that statement generally is true, UA sadly is one of those books that tell the reader what to think about a character and his/her actions. And that takes the enjoyability out of it.
You might see that different, but what I valued about Mr Pratchett's writings, amongst other things, was that he never talked down onto the reader, but always allowed to form one's own opinion on a statement, even if it was rather clear a character mirrored his view.
We were always free to disagree with the characters and their doings.
Even when the text said that a character was like this and this, we saw him do something to live up to it.

I wish I'd be able to explain what I mean

EDIT: Something just got me thinking:

Maybe, just maybe everything that seems 'off' or 'wrong' is actually done on purpose and we are in for a (final) meeting with the History Monks.

Let me explain:

IIRC in ToT it was said time had been broken before and putting it back together again didn't work that well.
Then it broke again and Lobsang put it back together again, successfully, as I remember.

Now, what if in the 'broken' time (in which the events from CoM to Truth occured IIRC) 'Stories' (see Witches Abroad) didn't had that much power over people as they should have had. Instead you had a greater influence by Narrativium (not the same as 'A Story') and believe.

Now the time is 'fixed' and stories take a much greater influence again, thereby bringing forth events that make little sense, but are good for the story. Characters, that have no personality, but are good for the story.
And so on.

Maybe we are in for a Monks story, where they have to, well, break time again without destroying reality, because it turned out with stories not that much in charge things were better after all.

As sometimes it might be better to leave something broken than to fix it.

Terry Pratchett is one of the few authors out there I'd actually think would be able to come up with such a thing and pull it off.